Cisco’s 2013 Is Off to a “Slow Start,” Chambers Says

Shares of Cisco Systems are falling after hours as its CEO John Chambers predicted a good year in 2013, despite what he called a slow start early.

While the initial results beat expectations slightly, Chambers’s comments about a “slow start with steady improvement through the year,” made on CNBC, pushed the shares down by more than 2 percent in after-hours trading. He also said he expects market conditions to improve “at a much slower pace than we would like.” (See the video below.)

Cisco has often argued that its purchasing patterns tend to serve as an early warning sign of the health of the global economy, especially given its exposure to government spending both in the U.S. and around the world.

Cisco said it expects to earn between 48 cents and 50 cents per share in the next quarter and that it expects sales to grow by about 4 percent to 6 percent. It also said it expects gross margins, an important indicator of profitability, to be in the range of 61 percent to 62 percent.

Here’s the CNBC video.

And this is the point at which I pick a song that characterizes Cisco’s earnings. Given Chambers’s language earlier about a “slow start” to the year, and combined with Cisco’s new marketing campaign with the tag line “Tomorrow Starts Here,” I mashed up those two things and came across the song “Future Starts Slow” by The Kills. Enjoy.

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